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The president tonight was eloquent in his diagnosis of what most troubles America today, the economy. The trouble lies in his treatment of what ailed us this past year, the economy. For the past year, the President and the Democrats created a crisis on health care when what really was ailing our country was a very sick economy. Now all of a sudden, the president has woken up to the fact that was needs his most immediate attention is our economy. Now he has become a champion of job creation and tax relief. Like the doctor who does not listen to the patient, this President and the Democrats ignored the People who grew increasingly impatient and dissolutioned with the way they had been treated or mistreated by the very people they hoped would have the cure.

The President and Congress now wants to spend billions on a jobs bill to “get people back to work”. Will such a bill be passed with the same lack of transparency and heavy handedness as their failed stimulus bill? The President and Congress lacks credibility. The stimulus bill was forced through without anyone having read it before voting on it. The President by his own admission failed us on the economy. He promised that if the stimulus was passed unemployment would not top 8%. Unemployment today till tops 10% nationally and in many urban areas surpasses 16% or more.

The majority of State of the Union was just more of the same. He is good at telling us what our problems are, but he comes up short with regard to concrete programs or policies to solve the specific problems he identified. He calls again upon Congress to come up with biils. He offers no programs of his own. Isn’t that what got him in the mess he finds himself today? His main problem is he refuses to lead. The “Buck” doesn’t stop in the Oval Office, it just gets passed there.

The President’s first State of the Union, I found to be a warmed over re-write of the first speech he gave to a Joint Session of Congress shortly after taking office. The people want the president and Congress to focus on the economy, they want the transparency and bipartisanship they were promised, and they want government spending constrained and the deficit reduced.

Truer words were never spoken, when the president said “we face a deficit of trust”. Yes sir, your administration and the Democrats in Congress certainly do. Such was reflected in the recent setbacks your party suffered in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts.

Lastly and more importantly with regard to our security, the president was right when he said, that when those who seek to harm one American, harms us all. What he is wrong about is preventing harm to future harm to our country by the dangerous policy of treating enemy combatants as common criminal defendants, which he and his Administration supports.

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